The difference is that Ritchie actually created something himself, while all that Jobs ever did was take credit for other people`s work. He was the marketing manager in charge of a creative team, not an actual creative himself. Steve Jobs took a previously respectable company and turned it into a personality cult ... he deserved to be pilloried, not praised.

Spot on. Someone MAY have invented C years later, but how far behind where we are right this instant would we be? Had he NOT thought it up, how long does it eventually take someone to do so? How much longer would it have taken for Windows to come out? How much longer for massive amounts of software that exist today? We could still be sending penpal letters and buying products in stores only. So, in truth, if not for him, maybe at this point in time, we DON`T have all of these things and they continue to be pipe dreams in `50s style "In the future" movies.

@draculya I C what you did there. Mr. Ritchie does get my respect, but so does Steve Jobs. Both were creative visionaries in their fields, and the world would be a much less technologically advanced place without either one.

So Steve created a bunch of crappy products that either existed already or are crappier versions of things that existed already. He may have trademarked the iPod but MP3 music players existed years before the first one and were superior when it came out. iPads are just laptops with touchscreens and no keyboards, which is severely inconvenient in comparison to regular laptops. So what exactly is so amazing about apple products again?

"that`s like saying Guy1 wrote and designed widely known and used books but Guy2 developed paper"

Not exactly. C isn`t the only option out there, it`s just the best. Had he not developed it in the first place, someone else would have developed something to take it`s place. Paper, pretty much, is the only thing that would work in books.

Not to say that developing the most widely used programming language isn`t a huge thing. Just that to say Windows, Linux and other OSs wouldn`t exist with out it isn`t true.

@jendrian. You obviously fail to understand the meaning behind the post. Farrah and Michael are both huge celebrities so, of course, one death did not trump the other in the media. Ritchie is unknown to the majority so his death didn`t get much play. Some might say that the death of, well known, Jobs trumped.

As much as I believe that Dennis Ritchie has not received his due from the mainstream, I also believe that to say none of those things would have existed without him is wrong. They just would have not been done in C. Unix was originally coded in Assembly language. Everything Dennis Ritchie did was built upon work done by others, so it`s not like he invented programing.

The same can be said of Steve Jobs, as he got most of his ideas from others as well, especially the Macintosh and its OS.

That being said, Dennis Ritchie rocks and would kick Steve Jobs A$$ in an epic rap battle.

Didn`t we go through this when Dennis Ritchie died? every news outlet and every site like this reminding you of him? Why do people insist on comparing him with Steve Jobs just because they died in the same month? Wouldn`t it be nicer to say: "Dennis Ritchie did this and that and he deserves your respect" instead of "Dennis Ritchie was ignored because Steve Jobs was in the way"

Which by the way, thanks to the gazillion posts reminding you of the matter, was not actually the case.

It`s like saying nobody cared about Farrah Fawcett`s death because Michael Jackson died around the same time. Total bull.